Floaters - A power-user stickies & productivity app - v0.9 now with Markdown vaults
I've posted about Floaters previously and got a lot of great feedback. The #1 request was saving notes as individual Markdown files in a “vault.” You can now sync with other apps that use Markdown vaults while taking advantage of Floaters' unique features. At…
I've posted about Floaters previously and got a lot of great feedback. The #1 request was saving notes as individual Markdown files in a “vault.” You can now sync with other apps that use Markdown vaults while taking advantage of Floaters' unique features. At its simplest, Floaters is a notes app that you can activate, control, and hide via keyboard while in any app. It’s well suited for temporary (scratchpad) notes, as well as permanent (saved) notes. It lets you organize & group floaters to avoid window overload. It also handles all the note app basics: tags, tasks, images, links, files, lists, screenshots, markdown, etc. Problem(s) My efficiency is ruined by not knowing exactly where things are, and not being able to quickly get to them. In the real world we find stuff by remembering where we left it. When it’s not there, or if it’s hard to reach, it slows us down. I wanted: A notes app that's instantly available without getting in the way. To physically link notes together when working on something. Not just “they are all in the same folder/tag.” But instead ”they are all visible at the same time and their positions are remembered.” To set up an ever-changing layout of related notes that I could show and hide without having to use my mouse Instant access to specific notes with a keystroke, regardless of what app I’m using. To close groups of linked notes and easily reopen them again in the future in their exact same locations. Comparison Apple Notes - Clunky, not keyboard focused, mostly one-window Stickies - Basic, minimal keyboard control, no groupings/window management/etc. Obsidian - Works well alongside Floaters but does not focus on quick interactions and spatial organization. SideNotes - Great simple idea. No vault features. Floaters is much more powerful with positioning and layout. Pricing Lifetime license: $25. No subscriptions. The non-App-Store download is currently free to use without limitations until version 1.0 is released. www.floaters.app On the Mac App Store
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that's cool, I really like the UI
Yep, it was a looooot of work since Floaters basically "syncs" with the vault folder (instead of just loading on each launch). There's a lot of internal data that wouldn't/shouldn't get exported to the .md files that's needed for the Floaters-specific features. I'm really happy with how it turned out and have already been using it to store notes in iCloud drive and edit on iOS via Obsidian.
Thank you! It's definitely unique in terms of usability and I'm at the point where I have a tough time working without it.
Thank you, appreciate the feedback! In terms of Markdown capability, Floaters handles basically everything except for Tables (which should be added soon). Were there other Markdown features you were looking for? In terms of finding notes, you can search in the app, organize by tags, and also via groupings. If you're using the new markdown vault you can also organize notes into subfolders which will be reflected on disk.
Thank you! Yeah I don't know of other apps with the same type of feature/setup. It's sort of like a split view but done in the opposite direction, and I find it very useful. The Markdown/etc features are all optional and can be disabled, just wanted to add it for the people who rely on Markdown but wanted to use the unique Floaters features.
Thanks really appreciate it, please lmk what you think if you try it out. Yes it's a fully native macOS app written in Xojo. All the code is written by me, I only use AI in this project as a replacement for google/stack overflow to point me in the right direction when I couldn't figure something out.
Good to know it’s hand-coded by a human and not yet another vibe-coded app. I downloaded to give it a try but immediately encountered an issue: When I switched to a white background colour, the text remains light grey so it’s hard to see
Thank you! Sounds like a lot of this is related to the Markdown feature to process markdown automatically when changing lines. (Almost) none of this is happening when that's disabled, so that feature definitely needs more testing and improvement. Regarding the web floaters, you can press Command-G to show the URL field, but that definitely needs to be more obvious. Floaters will remember the last location load that each time the web floaters is opened. For the custom shortcuts, are you pressing Command-1 etc while Floaters is active? They are not global shortcuts, but you can assign the in-app shortcuts to global shortcuts to use them outside of the app.
I think the direction you are going and the ability to glue and roll-up to the title bar is fairly unique. I would like to see more on the markdown capability, and all I could see i.t.o finding notes was a search? Nicely done and keep this going
Resizing the app windows also causes the heading 1 to behave weirdly
The Markdown vault support is a good direction. The useful part is not just being able to export notes, but keeping the files usable outside the app while still having the fast keyboard workflow inside it. That balance is harder than it sounds because once an app adds its own grouping and layout state, it is easy for the user’s notes to become dependent on the app.
i really like the glue feature. is this an original idea? i think so. nice! if it's just me, resist markdown and all those 1000 feature requests now. and/or make this very very optional /hidden.
WOW the glue feature is so unique and I can see it being incredibly useful. I love that it resembles what you can do with physical sticky notes. I’m currently using Antinote as my sticky note app but I will have to give yours a try. Is this app native for macOS, and how do you AI in development (if you do)?
This app looks great ! Probably what I was looking for for my quick notes and tasks !!! The thing is that there are small bugs. Don't know if it is because of my Mac config, but here is a short list of issues I encountered: - Image: when adding a screenshot and then Enter, I get "![]()" instead of the image.. But if I type Space, then the image sticks. Not intuitive. - If you have type some text and later you want to insert a new line at the end of a sentence, pressing Enter does not work when the cursor is placed at the end of the line. Need to go at the beginning of the next line, press Enter and then the new line is inserted above. Again, a little annoying. - When the note is longer than the size of the window, if you press Enter to go to the next line, the display of the note goes back to the top of the window. I can still type and if I do, it comes back at the line I am typing, but again, weird. - Maybe me, but when I open a new Web Note, it goes to ChatGPT and I don't see any way to have it open to another website. Is it a hidden function ? - Typing "---" to create divider does not work. But typing "___" works ... - I could not find the way to make the Shortcuts work. I think I could manage to assign a short cut with Option+Command+1 but then if I press Command+1, nothing happens ... - When creating a link in a Note, and then if you edit it, the link is know shown in the popup, just the title and the field for the URL is empty. Good luck !!
Floaters: Scratchpad & Notes — by Oranged Software, LLC Category: Productivity · $24.99 Age: released ~1.4 years ago · rated 17+ Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here. Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
This looks super neat. A free non-app store download is so much better than a "Early bird discount". Trying it asap!